We don’t need institutes, we need constitutes… and they should live in a Makar House

Imagine a Makar House… from Dezeen

Last week we ran an exultant Ali Smith short story from Imagine A Country, a collection of Scottish-originated-but-globally-oriented ideas for a better society (all profits going to a basket of charities).

We said we’d print the chapter written by A/UK co-initiator Pat Kane for the volume - and here it is: 800 words on the “Maker House”, a kind of “constitute” or development organisation for communities. The thinking should be familiar to most readers of the Daily Alternative, beyond the Scottish context. The Maker House could easily be an element in our evolving civic framework, the Citizens Action Network.

In the current corona-crisis, perhaps it’s more important than ever to imagine the most creative, productive and welcoming social/civic spaces we can - so that we can fight for a better and healthier world (and biosphere), that might enable such social beauty.

Pat Kane on the “Makar House”

One of the great challenges of the twenty-first century is not just how we make the transition towards a zero-carbon society but how we make that shift joyous, satisfying and pleasurable. If we don’t, then I predict there will be a lot of resistance and revolt.

Over a century of capitalism, our very subjectivity and identity has been shaped by consumerism, advertising and the right to shop. What Angela Carter once called “the infernal desire machines” of marketing and retail have tapped into our primal and social emotions. Unplugging rudely from those satisfactions will feel like major surgery.

So we need behavioural bridges that people can walk across, and cultural destinations they’re glad to arrive at. (By culture I mean all the creative and making activities of a community, not just opera stars and auteurs.) To that end, I want to suggest a new kind of institute for communities. It will focus on giving people options beyond consum- erism, engaging their primary instincts for play, care and curiosity in creative and tangible ways.

Indeed, let’s not call it an institute – redolent of warders and barred windows – and call it a constitute: a place where we make things, and remake ourselves at the same time. (The German Romantics – and nineteenth-century Scandinavian social reformers – would have called this process ‘Bildung’.) And because we’re in a Scottish context, let’s give it a specific name: the Makar House.

Why ‘Makar’? It’s one of my favourite Scots words, as it links ‘poetry’ and ‘work’ (being a literal translation of the Greek term poietes, poet or maker). And the offer of poetic/poietic work is, I would suggest, one of the ways we unwire ourselves from consumerism, and rewire ourselves for a more practically joyful life. More about that in a minute.

And why a ‘House’ (and a particularly well-built, open, comfortable and enduring house, at that)? Because, in the way that Carnegie put his stamp on Scotland by supporting libraries and public rooms that still stand today, we need to make this kind of facility an irreversible gift to a community.

What happens in the Makar House? I envisage a mixture of science and engineering labs, repair and design shops, kitchens, media studios and performance space, a ‘library of things’ or tool library, and well- equipped meeting rooms of various sizes available very cheaply or free, to make it possible for every act of consumption to be replaced by an act of creation: making, remaking, repairing, inventing, customising, cherishing and restoring.

Communities will be urged to bring all their skills to the Makar House – the electricians and the joiners, the linguists, the coders and the hackers, the facilitators and the managers, the child-carers and the sports trainers, the gardeners and maybe even some poets . . .

“What,” you say, “and just come up with something? Collaborate and co-create freely and easily, when jobs have to be done, chores have to be completed? What time or energy would we have for that?”

My secret is out.There are two much bigger ideas that sit behind the Makar House – a reduction in the working week (without reduced pay), and a universal basic income.

The first would ‘steal’ a day (or two) from your working duties, letting you try out this new post-consumerist (maybe even post-capitalist) lifestyle free from guilt; and the second would give you time to be as creatively active as you would like to be within the Makar House.

It’s very different from the old ‘sports’,‘leisure’ or ‘community’ centre, which were ‘re-creation’ places, something to repair and heal you so you could be thrown back into the grind. Between planetary limits, which will force a reduction in human consumption, and radical automation, which will replace most repetitive work, our old models for purpose and dignity are falling apart.

Since this new era needs us to be more active and conscious about the ‘stuff’ in our lives, our politicians and administrations (and who knows, maybe even a few clever capitalists) have to help us become more self-providing, more materially conscious, more ingenious. Or at least they should, unless they want to face an awful lot of social meltdown when people turn to desperate and extreme solutions to the chaos of their lives.

I imagine that Scots, with their rich appreciation for culture, community, education, science and technology – what the naturalist John Muir once called “salt of the earth, and of machines” – would be able to support these ‘constitutes’ and their enabling policies. And as the Carnegie buildings reflected their era (not unproblematically), maybe the Makar Houses could be the symbols of an independent, lively, sustainable Scotland.

More about Pat here. The book Imagine A Country: Ideas for a better future, edited by Val McDermid and Jo Sharp, is out this week on Bloomsbury.